Fully aware of the critical role of lubricating products in the nation’s quest towards rapid industria-lisation as well as ensure that adulteration of lubricants is stamped out, the Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) has embarked on a nationwide mop up of substandard lubricants, describing the move as an imperative in safeguarding the lives of unsuspecting consumers in the country, while also boosting Nigeria’s industrialisation drive.
According to the agency, the impact of fake and counterfeited lubricants on the economy poses threat to nation’s manufacturing industry, maintaining that  the use of lubricants touches on all vehicles, industrial machines of various types, hydraulic systems, electric transformers and other things.
“It is obvious that most of our daily activities depend directly or indirectly on use of lubricants, and it is, therefore, the massive evacuation of substandard lubricants cannot be over flogged,” SON said.
The Director General, SON, Osita Aboloma, at an enforcement exercise to raid different markets and warehouses in Lagos in search of adulterated and uncertified lubricants, explained that the agency has been reinvigorated courtesy of its new SON Act 2015 to remove all non-complying products from the nation’s market, saying that its new rigour was also aimed at improving the capacity utilisation of Nigeria’s manufacturing industry.
Aboloma, who was represented by the Director, Compliance, SON, Bede Obayi, also disclosed that the special raid was targeted at markets and warehouses where suspected substandard products were stocked or sold.
In his words, “The special raid is in accordance with our mandate that all non-complying products must be removed from the markets in this country and this special raid is targeted at anywhere we suspect that there is substandard products and this is why we embark on the raiding of warehouses and markets where suspected substandard lubricants are sold to unsuspecting consumers in this country, we also seized cables and textile materials because we want to make this country a place where indigenous manufacturers can come and produce.”
He added: “We do not want these unscrupulous importers to flood this country with substandard products. We want the capacity utilisation of Nigerian companies to improve so as to employ the teeming unemployed Nigerian youths and it can only be so when these substandard products are removed from the nation’s market. This is why we have stopped at nothing in getting everything that is suspected to be substandard out of the markets.”